This must involve improving public health and preventative services [...] supporting** people to make healthy choices for themselves and their families [...] The approach will include targeted investment and action for high risk groups such as smoking cessation programmes.

Our health should be getting better – but alcohol, smoking, obesity, bad diets and not enough exercise means it is getting worse***. What’s crazy is that only a tiny fraction of the health budget is spent on preventing people getting ill in the first place. We will reform incentive payments to health boards and GPs, linking them more directly to prevention measures.

Today, the NHS faces unique upward pressures on spending. Lifestyle-linked health problems like obesity, smoking and alcohol abuse are putting huge demands on health services**** and are harming people’s quality of life.

Prevention is better than cure, so we will provide separate public health funding to local authorities, which will be accountable for–and paid according to–how successful they are in improving their local communities’ health.

So let's get this straight.

The choice - for public health issues which should be none of their fucking business - appears to be either nagging, hectoring, nannying and bullying by the state directly; or nagging, hectoring, nannying and bullying indirectly by way of financial incentives for local authorities to do so instead.

Of course, the real choice, generously offered by all three main parties, is to live how they tell you to ... or else.

** For 'supporting', read 'forcing'.*** This is a big fat lie**** Only if you ignore income from duties, and the irrefutable fact that healthy people cost more over a lifetime than those considered 'unhealthy'.

No choice...no voice...no vote/He who participates in pseudodemocracy is more guilty than thosewho misuse it.What's the use of a race with onlyone horse.Fear gets the attention of politicians, not a scrap of paper with an x on it.

Refusing to vote is an option, but consider first how the system works.

If there are four candidates and only five people turn out to vote, one of those candidates is bound to get at least two votes. That candidates wins the election.

On two votes.

If we don't vote, someone will still win.

I will only vote for a party that will dismantle the smoking ban, and all the other bans. That is my primary issue now. There is no point worrying about economic or political detail as long as we are heading fast into a Stasi state. That nannying, banning, controlling mindset has to be flushed out before anything else can happen.

All those main parties despise smokers, drinkers, and anyone above the State approved waist size.

I will not vote for a party whose manifesto is based on eradicating me.

You might as well try getting the Asians to vote BNP. It's the same thing.

I beg to differ. Remember this one thing - Labour took us smokers for a ride five years ago in their manifesto. They did this deliberately and with malice aforethought. In my constituency, I can vote one lying thief out. My MP is Ruth Kelly, who is retiring at the election. Whoever replaces her will not get my vote. I could vote UKIP I suppose, but would that not risk the Labour person getting back in? My aim is to rid at least my constrituaency of this blight. It just so happens that my constituency is rather marginal having always been Tory in the past. Purely tactically, I and my family will vote conservative. That will be one down and 110 or so to go.

What we need is a total change of government, and that is why, on this occasion, smokers need to vote tactically. Get rid of Labour, full stop.

That said, Junican has a point. If I lived in a marginal I'd have to vote tactically just to keep Labour out.

The stated intentions of Cameron re: bans etc may be Labour-esque but these plans go counter to many Tory MPs and also to the vast majority of the grassroots membership. He may well want to implement such Nazi-esque diktats but at least with the Tories there are internal pressures against them, unlike Labour who at every level relish the idea of exerting control.

Similarly, the Cameron critics will, I feel, be far more vocal once they're in. At the moment they're just desperate to keep quiet lest the tiniest whisper of discontent by picked up by Pravda and be used against them.

Also, remember, the Tories have a much easier (and well used!) protocol for getting rid of leaders, unlike Labour who can't get rid of a leader without a (typically Socialist) maze of procedures. Cameron knows this.

As I say, if I was in a marginal, then a vote for the Tories is far from a wasted vote.

But as I live in a safe seat I have the freedom of voting according to my conscience. It'll make no difference but it'll add to the total number of votes cast.

The real choice is not the three parties.Which ever one of them gets in they will reap the whirlwind.Their up side down pyramid of government to people is now unsestainable.Their will be civil disturbance.Because eventually we will all refuse to pay for it anymore.Or the millions of ex public sector scum and parasites,(I just can't afford to pay your pensions), will all be out of work.And because those sort of dross always expect a meal ticket ,well it's going to get nasty.

Just heard on "PM" that, in Dundee, they're resorting to bribery in response to smoking prevalence of 30% (50% in the deprived areas in which the bribes are bing trialled). £50 a month in the form of a supermarket voucher.

They're claiming a 45% success rate which rather begs the question that, if a smoker wants to give up, he'll just do it and no amount of bribery will stop a smoker who doesn't want to. Much chuntering among non-smokers who, naturally, resent their hard-earned being spent this way.

Wonder what qualifies you - lie about being a smoker and have one just before presenting for the dosh?

The Doctors are getting a share of the pot as well, even for failing:-have a look at the last line re GPs

APPENDIX 2 Page 7(h)” GPs and Pharmacies are reimbursed for service delivery (inflation still to be applied for 09-10):£10.50 for each client setting a quit date.£40 for each client still quit at 4-week follow-up£10.50 for each client not quit at 4-week follow-up. No additional payment for those not followed up at 4 weeks.Pharmacies only – £3 per supply of NRT. ”http://www.warwickshire.nhs.uk/trustboardenclosures/march09/Enc%2016%20Tobacco%20Control%20and%20Smoking%20Cessation%20Board%20Report%20-%20March%202009.pdf